Friday, 29 November 2013

For personal reasons, Robert 'RLongtin' Longtin has left the site with immediate effect. This creates a vacancy in the Elections and Voting Coordinator position and in the two sims that he runs - D'ni and The Matrix.

In addition, following his LOA, Ash Leighton Plom has closed The Triple Zero and transferred the leadership of The West Star to Nick Buchanan, while Kevin 'Zuzutoo' Diamond will run Forgotten Realms.

Doctor Who's 50th anniversary episode was subject to intense secrecy - with no press screenings or preview tapes, as well as a global simulcast to minimise spoilers. Sometimes hiding your completed work is a sign that it's awful.

Not in this case. After a slightly disjointed start, Steven Moffat's 75-minute long tale proved to be a worthy and brilliant tribute to the world's longest running sci-fi/fantasy show.

This review contains minor spoilers

Thirteen points that stand out for me:

The use of the original Derbyshire theme at the beginning was great, along with the starting location at Coal Hill School.

Steven Moffat's ability to rewrite the show's history and still leave all the old stuff intact is superb; the climax here is a lovely example.

Mind you, we're going to need to alter a good number of Wiki articles on the Doctor.

I've visited the National Gallery and most of it doesn't look like that - it's full of religious painting, nudes and the occasional religious nude.

The Zygons were great fun - it allows for Moffat to easily wrong foot the audience, although one of those transformation scenes did look a bit overly gruesome for kids (hence the time slot, I would say).

Three Doctors in one scene, all arguing with and insulting each other; that was superb in 1972 and it's just as good now. "Sandshoes" and "Grandad" will last long in the fandom's memory.

What was the fez doing in the Under Gallery in the first place?

We've now got an explanation for that scene at the end of "The Shakespeare Code" and a reference in "The End of Time".

I guess that the Could Have Been King was a bit beyond the budget. I don't think we actually saw any Dalek extermination effects here either and some of the CGI in the final shot was a bit obvious, but it had to be with three Doctors no longer with us and four no longer looking like they did.

The appearance of [censored] at the end was a great one, which was a lovely bit of the past.

I thought we might get an appearance from [spoiler], although it was a very brief one.

The lack of an appearance from [spoiler] was got around nicely and we've now managed to get all the [spoiler] on camera.

So, we are going to Trenzalore for Christmas... counting the one in "Journey's End", we've used up all twelve regenerations, so that will have to be dealt with then.

Conclusion

A bit disjointed to begin with and I was wondering how Moffat was going to deal with the previous canon near the end, but he managed it admirably. Well done to all involved.